This is Mackinder's shorthand from the post-World War I era:
Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland:
Who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island:
Who rules the World-Island commands the world.
His contribution to linking geography with power and foreign policy is certainly valuable. But what about his argument that if you control Eurasia (and later he added Africa) that you will control the world?
Isn't that an argument that if you control the majority of the world's people, natural resources, and industrial power that you should be able to conquer the rest? Okaaay. That does make sense in a mathematical sort of way.
But the shorthand is kind of confusing in a South Park sort of way:
I don't get it.
I am confused because I don't see how that controlling eastern Europe part leads to the rest.
France had eastern Europe in the Napoleonic wars. Germany had eastern Europe in two world wars. The Soviet Union had that in the Cold War. And the American-led NATO alliance has it now.
Profit naturally follows??
Without making claims about what follows, I would say the Belarus is arguably the most important territory in Europe today. But I make no claims grander than the Russia issue.
But notwithstanding NATO's primacy in eastern Europe, now the worry is that China with its one belt one road (OBOR) project to extend trade lines inland to Europe will give China the capacity to dominate the "world island?"
But isn't eastern Europe safely in NATO's hands? Or is the mechanism for controlling the "world island" different now? Will Central Asia be the new eastern Europe in this theory?
Of course, if China is the new threat to controlling the world island on its way to dominating the world, the rest of the world that doesn't want to be dominated by China has an interest in making sure that China in the future no more than Europe in the past could dominate their launching pad for controlling whatever fulcrum of the world island you want to define.
Which would mean that "China" should be resisted and turned into a geographic term like "Europe" has been in order to stop a single power from pushing west from China just as Britain and America prevented a single power from controlling Europe and pushing east.
Mackinder had valuable geopolitical insights to offer. I can only hope in my dreams to make a contribution even approaching the scale of his insights.
But the "world island" path to world dominance takes his insights too far into a mechanism that would automatically lead to world dominance. I just don't get it.
